Everybody and his dog is speaking of RTS here, but speaking of strategy TBS are masters of the genre. (they are also masters in micromanaging, I agree). Look at Heroes of Might and Magic, Alpha Centauri/Civilization, Age of Wonders. They shine far more on the strategy topic because they are turn based. But I don''t want to engage on a TBS/RTS war, so:

back on the first post, is it better to have fewer units with better control: the sim approach is the way to go. By sim I mean ''let the computer AI work the details and concentrate on the grand scheme''. A hint of this possibility was introduced by Majesty (yeah, a RTS of a sort): you didn''t actually control your individual units, you control their general behavior. Don''t get me wrong, the implementation of the sim approach in this game was somehow screwed but we should, either in developping a RTS or a TBS, goes this way. Starting by economics and then working toward the military system, because econ is where is most of the useless MMing. I can rant much more on this, but I await your coments before.



Delphi::Athena

I personally think that it''s hard to compare RTS with TBS. I consider them completely different in principle. I agree that micromanagment would be better suited to TBS though. It just seems logical.

So no one here has heard of the game Supremacy on the Amiga?

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

quote: Original post by Ksero

One thing I''ve been thinking of is customization...

Let the user define their own squadrons, which units should be in them, define behaviour/AI with a scripting language?

Let the user write their own building patterns, detailing what to build when... e.g. ''when gold > 100 build archer-healer squadron'' ''build 30 % swordsmen-squadrons, 15 % light cavalry, save rest of gold. order cavalry to scout surroundings.''
Maybe it would be possible to make a ''choke-point''-pattern, and placing it at strategic places...?

Just a thought... /Ksero

Dark Reign had one of these. You could script the AI for each computer player--it was a pretty weak language I think, and there weren''t really any good tutorials for them, but it was still something to play with.

One more reply before I have to leave...

quote:
My god, havent any of you ever heard of or played Age of Empires 2? Your whole discussion on squad based control or individual unit control has been pretty much solved by that game.

Key word: discussion. Things can always be improved upon. And actually, no, I haven''t played AOE2. I played a demo of AOE1, I think, but that''s about it.

--

All hail the Technoweenie!

Lol, no offense guys, but you must be very simple minded folks with not alot of quick thinking skills and hand-eye cordination. Do you fall over when walking up the stairs?

My point is that unit control in aoe2 is incredibly easy. I play DM all the time and usually have armies of upto 150 units, and I never have a problem controlling them (probably why I always win). But I have also played Shogun: Total War, and found the squad based controls in that game just totaly crappy shit. If one wanted to play a single battle and have it last less then 5min its near impossible to decently control and organize your troops. I have attacked with armies in that game with 3000+ units against an equally sized army and it just becomes a huge ass mess. You just totally give up any kind of structured control unless you want the single battle to last 5 hours, in which case the time limit for the battle would have long run out.

Also, is squad based combat really any good if you cant control the individual units? Then you have the question of why squads? If you can only control a squad as a whole and not the individual units, then in essense, the whole squad becomes a single unit and can be treated in every aspect as a single unit, and thus is no longer a squad. The only difference is how it is graphically portrayed on the screen.

If units are represented as a single units on the screen, they are much easier to control, unlike a squad. Consider the case where you tell a squad to attack an enemy unit, but the squad has to walk around an object on the map to get to it (very common scenario), one half of the squad goes 1 way the other half goes the other way, or the squad gets broken up for some other reason (like durning combat), but since you cant control the individual units, you cant redirect the other ones. That is the problem with squad only control, it does allow you to micromanage. Take for example, a squad is in combat and the units get broken up, one of the units ends of chasing another unit a little ways away durning the combat, now you end up selecting the squad and re-directing its attack, then that single unit has to get back into formation with its original squad, and it will probably end up marching through a long path of enemy fire on the way to its squad. And thats because you cant select that individual unit and tell it to attack the units right next to it, or you can select the unit and re-group it into a new squad that is right next to it, but no, it has to walk all the way back to its original squad.

Many people, including myself, really like the ability to micromanage when they need to. That is why the control of units in aoe2 is so great, it allows for both macro and micro management of units with incredible ease.

So this is just my opinion on squad based and individual unit controlls, and from what I have seen and played (And I play just about every game in existance for my job) Squad based ''only'' control always just sucks.


Possibility

I was wondering, do you people think that gui''s and control mechanisms in games can never be generically perfect?

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

Well, perfect GUI, probably not as such.
The perfect GuI would be tailored to fit its player needs ... THAT would be perfect.
As Possibility says, there are people with less coordination skills, those who need to see everything all the time, those ... well you get the idea.
We are all different, and that''s the whole problem of game design, do you want to please the masses, or do something you had in mind. Do you take into account the player, or the generic player, thus "forgeting" all the others ...and I don''t even talk about disabled people support !

But, hey, if we think that we can do real AI someday, I sure as hell believe that we can achieve a perfect GUI before that.
Pesonally, I believe in direct neural connection, I mean, if we can have erotic dreams, fall and feel it while we dream, and all other feelings that we can have during a dream, then for sure we could directly connect to the brain and "simulate" everything there, couldn''t we ?

But I guess I am OT now

youpla:-P

I mostly agree with Possibility''s opinion of AoE2. It''s usage of formations, while not perfect, was very well done. It''s interface overall was certainly better then most, if not all, of the currently available RTSs out there. It was no more difficult to manage large armies then any other game, and it''s formations made it a lot easier to manage in some ways. I do agree with Ratsia''s comments on it''s weak points, but these are weaknesses every RTS I''ve played has. (I certainly haven''t played every single RTS out there, but I''ve played a good portion of them) I haven''t played AoE2 for a while now, but I could have sworn there was a way to get the equivalent of the attack-move command. I remember that being an immediate annoyance I had with the game and then stumbling on a not so intuitive way of effectively getting the same results. I''ll play a quick game tonight and see if I can remember what it was.

Oh, you guys seem to believe that I think AoE2 is worse than other RTS-games. I never meant that, actually it''s the best I''ve seen.

Possibility, you say that you play RTS-games all the time and have played all of them. No wonder that you say they are easy to play. Every system is easy to those who master it and almost every system can be mastered by practicing ebough. Controlling systems should be easy and intuitive enough for newbies too.

-Ratsia

quote: Original post by Ratsia
Controlling systems should be easy and intuitive enough for newbies too.

-Ratsia

Well this is the entire point of gui''s isn''t it, to avoid technicalities! and bring newbies in.



I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

No my point about playing most rts games is that I know which GUI's are easy and which are not. C&C and aoe both have extremely easy interfaces. Homeworld had an incredibly difficult interface and thus the game usually ended up not being played in 3D but rather keeping your forces confined to the primary 2D plane. Even with my experience I found the interface and camera control so horrible for a rts game that it totally turned me off from the game.

The most recent game I have just acquired is Submarine Titans, and the visual graphics of this game are WOW! Fortunately I have a super computer and I can play in the highest resolution with full detail turned on and not have the slightest bit of slow down and I was totally impressed with the graphics. But the interface was another thing. Usually I can sit down at a game and totally figure it out with never having to open a manual. But I actually had to play the tutorials to figure the game out.

The inteface(gui) should only require a minimum of mouse clicks to get an action done. Take C&C, Red Alert, and TBS (which sucked) for example, to make a light tank, you slimply click on the light tank pic on the right production bar = DAMN SIMPLE. But one thing I didnt like was you often had to scroll up and down, plus, if you built your buildings in a different order each game, the stuff you can make is not listed in the same order in the production bar. One thing I always whished for in the game is that the order of things to make in the production bar on the right would the exact same every game no matter what order you made your barracks or war factory.

Then there are games like Submarine titans. In order to produce something, you first have to click on this small button, that brings up a new panel, on this panel you have 4 choices (the pics on the buttons are totally unintuitive for the catagory of submarines), so you click on 1 of them 4 buttons, a new panel comes up with the actual things you can produce for that catagory. Now these pics in here are totally unintuitive aswell. Unlike C&C you can tell the differnce between a solder and a tank by looking at the picture and know what there combat effectiveness is gonna be. But not in this game you cant. So inorder to make a submarine it will require a minimum of 3 mouse clicks. 3 times more then required for C&C. Ontop of that, that last panel with the final choices is often not big enough to show all the choices, so you have to scroll in it, and the scroll bars are small tiny buttons.

Now granted you can use keys for most things, but those always take a long time to learn.

Also, hot keys should be standard for most unit interaction things. For example,

# = selects the group of units
crtl + # = assign a group of units to this number
spacebar = centers screen on selected units
alt + # = selects the numbered groups of units and centers screen on them
shift = holding down shift will allow you to select multiple groups (example, hold down shift and press 1, 4, and 5 will selcect the groups 1, 4 and 5. selecting a group of units and then holding shift and then click on units will deselect them or select them depending on weather they are already selected or not)
Home = center screen on your main home base
mouse wheel = allows you to cycle between idle workers in one direction and idle military units in the other direction.


now I know most of the keys are customizable, but these are what the default keys should be. When I played submarine titans, none of these key combinations worked except for # and crtl+#. Now that just isnt right. How can you make a game and not follow the standards set forth by your predacessors?

Possibility
Boy that was a long message, but I am work and have nothing to do and extremely bored off my ass, lol. And I am dying to get home to play the AOK Expansion Pack.

Edited by - Possibility on August 8, 2000 7:58:12 PM